


caught between a strong mind and a fragile heart

by NationalityIssues



Series: Musings of the Doctor Who Universe [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Inktober, Inktober Day 8: Frail, TW for injuries and blood, Telepathic Link, The Doctor's Past is Kinda Revealed, hawyee, memory sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 12:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20966474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NationalityIssues/pseuds/NationalityIssues
Summary: When the villains of the day implant a memory disintegration software into Yasmin's mind, the Doctor has to delve into her memories and remove it before it's too late.





	caught between a strong mind and a fragile heart

**Author's Note:**

> So here's a slightly late upload for Day 8 of Inktober: 'Frail'! I hope you guys enjoy reading this, because it was pretty annoying to write. 
> 
> While writing this, I was listening to 'Fake Plastic Trees' by Radiohead quite a bit :)

“Doc, is she going to be okay?” Graham’s voice was frantic, loud, grating against her ears as they raced down the metal hallways blaring with harsh lights.

The Doctor’s breathing was laboured and her knee stung with every jerked movement, and somewhere between her exhaustion and panic the Doctor couldn’t find it in herself to give him an answer. Not when she was struggling to be sure of it herself. 

Behind them, there were the footsteps of angry Aulmor soldiers, with their armoured uniforms and heavy guns, thundering against the metal gratings as they chased after their escaped prisoners. 

In the Doctor’s arms, bathed in the red artificial glow, was Yasmin - bruised, bloodied, unconscious, with a split upper lip and an utterly mangled arm. But that wasn’t the most concerning part to the Doctor, no - the Aulmor had done something to her mind, but she couldn’t tell what and the mere thought of Yaz being hurt so, so bad and not being sure of what happened was driving her _insane_ \- 

She pulled Yasmin closer to her chest as she ran. She couldn’t think of that. Not now. She had to focus on escape.  


They rounded the corner, and a tidal wave of relief crashed over the Doctor at the sight of her TARDIS at the end of the hallway. Speeding up, her foot caught on a misplaced metal plate, and agonizing pain shot up from the gash in her knee. She would have tumbled had Ryan not gripped her forearm harshly to keep her upright.

“Doors!” She managed to call out through gasping lungs, her voice strangled and hoarse, and on cue her ship swung the doors wide open to accept them. 

The trio bolted through the threshold ungracefully, Ryan tumbling to the floor on the Doctor’s heels. The moment the last of them stumbled through the doors, they slammed shut behind them with a loud, ringing finality. 

The Doctor, however, didn’t stop, _couldn’t stop, had to keep going_ \- she ran past the console and through hallways once more, ignoring Ryan’s questioning cry, because_ where the hell is the medbay, TARDIS can’t you see that I need- I need-!_

_The door to your left_, a voice in her mind commanded, and she kicked it open as hard as she could, pointedly ignoring the pain in her knee as she rushed towards the closest bed.

“Come on, come on, come on!” She snarled, rifling through drawers and slamming them closed as if they’d personally offended her. When she did find what she was looking for, she threw it down against the counters before moving on.

The door burst open as a panicked Ryan made himself known, but before he could say anything The Doctor was already tossing him a metal scanner that he was very barely able to catch. “Doctor, what-!”

“Use that to take stock of her arm injuries, just point and click. Once you’re done, feed it into the TARDIS interface on the left counter and she’ll tell you what to do next,” she ordered, draping her dirtied coat over a nearby stool. “When Graham gets here, have him hold her down - this is going to be a messy process. No matter what happens, do _not_ distract me or wake her.”

“Wait, Doctor, wait!” Ryan grabbed her arm, and she had to physically restrain herself from lashing out. _Why couldn’t he understand that this was urgent?_ “What are you going to do?”

“Telepathic link.” She tugged her arm free and pulled an extra stool near, leaning against the bed where Yaz was lying still, _still, way too still-_ “I’m going to have to dive into her mind, I think the Aulmor placed a mental block or some sort of neural disintegration network in there, but I need to actually access it to be sure.”

“I’m sorry, - What?!” Ryan sputtered, “A neural what now?”

“Yes, Ryan, that’s why it’s important you _be quiet and do what I’ve asked_!” The Doctor snarled out, slamming a hand against the counter in her anger. 

Ryan stopped, dumbfounded, and stared into her face for a solid moment - just long enough for her to feel regretful, stupid, _why would you yell at him? What has he done wrong?_

Of course, it’s in that moment that Graham blundered in with more questions, but frankly they went directly over the Doctors head. Pressing her fingers to Yasmin’s temples and closing her eyes tightly, she forced herself to cut off the outside world and embrace the sensation of vertigo that accompanied the darkness of falling into someone’s mind.

The minds of others were always a lottery, especially when it came to humans. Some held all their memories in rooms resembling those in their childhood homes other places significant to them, while others modeled their thought processes after various everyday functions and activities. The place she landed was, instead, a white room with bare walls.

It was dizzying, falling from a place of pure darkness into an area so well lit within a split second. It took her a precious moment to gain a sense of her bearings, and once she did she immediately reached out to the uniform-clad figure within the edge of her vision.

“Yasmin!” She gripped the figure’s shoulder, and turned her around roughly to grab her by her arms.

Yasmin, conscious only in her mind, gave her a look of utter confusion and mumbled out a worried, “Doctor?”

“Oh Yaz,” the Doctor breathed, relief soaking her form at the confirmation that yes, Yasmin was okay in her mind, she was fine, the Aulmor hadn’t harmed her enough yet, or the damage hadn’t spread to her major functions.

_ But how long, until the damage was severe? Irreversible? How quickly was it spreading? What did they do?  
_

The Doctor swallowed roughly, then moved her hands to cup Yasmin’s cheeks so that they were on the same level, staring into each other’s eyes. “Okay, Yaz,” she said in what she hoped was a confident manner, “You’re safe in the TARDIS now, we all are, but the Aulmor have planted something inside your mind, and I need to know what it is. Right now, we're on the surface level of your consciousness - a kind of border between yours and mine. In order to scan and access whatever they’ve implanted, I need your consent to dig deeper. If you consent, I want you to picture a doorway.”

Nodding in confirmation, Yaz furrowed her brows in a show of concentration. To the right of them, there was a flash of bright light, and a door materialized in the middle of the room. A more tangible representation of the border between their minds.

Without skipping a beat, the Doctor was already reaching out to open it and stepping through, her other hand holding Yaz’s and pulling her along. What greeted her was a smaller, grey room with bare walls and harsh fluorescent lights.

An interrogation room, the Doctor realized, and wasn’t quite sure what to make of this information.

On a closer inspection of the walls, she realized they weren’t bare - darker grey lines and tendrils of varying shapes and patterns stretches across the expanse, seeming to stick out in 3D against the flat wall. Occasionally, sections of lines would light up with a brilliant yellow-golden glow, and shortly after began slowly to fade black and crumble. She winced in sympathy - Yaz would be having a killer, stinging headache right about now.

“Okay, neural disintegration networks,” she breathed shakily. “I was right. God, I hate being right.”

Yaz paused, and stared at her incredulously, “Neural _what_.”

“Now, Yasmin,” the Doctor started, instead of answering her question, “I’m going to fix this, but I need you to trust me. As I work, you may find sections of your memory coming back up to light, and you need to focus and point out whichever ones feel wrong. I don’t know why, but what the Aulmor have implanted is disintegrating your memory pathways and rewriting them completely, and I need to restore all memories fully to eradicate it from your system. Do you understand?”

“I-I think so, yeah,” Yaz stuttered, gazing back into the Doctor’s eyes. “Pick out the memories that feel wrong. Got it.”

“Atta girl,” the blonde grinned, and set to work immediately. The scenery around them shifted slowly, as Yaz reluctantly brought up a memory, the ground seeming to rumble with the change as a woman appeared from a door in the corner of what seemed to be a living room.

“Mum,” Yasmin murmured, from somewhere behind the Doctor, “That’s my tenth birthday.”

She gave a hum of affirmation, already spotting black tendrils shifting into the bottom corners of the vision and snaking around the features of Mrs Khan, clearly with the goal of removing her from Yasmin’s memory. In her hearts, she felt a small moment of affection towards the woman.

_Feedback_, she realised. _A muted version of Yasmin’s emotions, placing itself into her mind._

Reaching out with her hand - _or was it with her conscience? a mental approximation of her hand?_ \- she began to tear the tendrils from their places and reroute them back into grey groups and areas. It didn’t take long for her to finish the job.

“Alright, bring up the next one,” she ordered, and watched as the scenery shifted to a classroom. Tendrils, this time, had looped themselves tightly and begun disintegrating around Yasmin’s classmates - one of which, she noticed, appeared to be a younger Ryan. As quick as she could, she redirected the lines into their proper places and healed them before they could permanently damage the memory.  _ Don’t watch the memories _ , she reminded herself.  _ They weren’t hers to remember _ .

It went like this for a while, with the Doctor preventing damage and reversing disintegration to the best of her ability before moving on to the next memory. It was around the 25th memory, of a little Yaz riding her bike down a road, that it happened.

_“I don’t want to go,”_ a voice, so familiar, trailed into their ears, and the Doctor startled bad, causing her and Yasmin to drop their link with the current memory. _No, no, no, that can’t be happening- _

“Doctor?” Yaz asked warily, “What was that?”

“Unimportant,” she assured, flashing her a slightly manic and strained grin over her shoulder. “Concentrate! Bring that memory back up.”

Yasmin did, and the Doctor had just begun patching up her first effort at riding a bike once more when another voice entered the fray.

_“Be a Doctor,” it whispered, so familiar and pained and raw, “Let me be brave.”_

“Doctor, really, who is that?”

The Doctor froze, the air leaving her lungs as she gazed at an oh-so familiar face that she missed so, so badly. The brown hair and big, expressive eyes stood out against the muted colours of Yasmin’s childhood memory, and the kind smile on Clara Oswald’s face only seemed to grow as the Doctor watched her fade from the landscape as quickly as she appeared.

“A doorway can be entered from both ways,” she growled softly to herself, in realization. This wasn’t good, not at all - if she wasn’t careful, the full scope of her memories could rush into Yasmin’s head, but she couldn’t concentrate on holding them back if she was focused on fixing her mind.

“Just ignore them,” she settled on as an explanation, stiffly finishing up her job with the bike-riding memory with one last flourish of her fingers. “We really need to focus on the task at hand, the sooner we fix everything, the better.”

Suddenly, the scenery began to glitch - first the grass on the side of the road turned a stunning orange red, flickering between it and the dull grey green of Yaz’s memory, until in the horizon appeared the silvery dome and towers of _Arcadia, black smoke, smell of ash, burning, no, not now, why now!_

A hand gripped her shoulder as the surroundings sparked and lagged, bringing the Doctor face-to-face with a rather frantic and anxious Yaz. “Doctor, what is going on? Why are these images showing up in my head?”

“I... I-!” The Doctor didn’t get a chance to answer, as screams punctuated the air around them, building into a crescendo alongside the voices of her past. They were transported, to her horror, into the midst of the Time War for a single split second, and in the next they were spitting and holding a lone Dalek at gunpoint, then overlooking the towers of Darillium with another hand in their own, then watching Amy Pond get touched by an angel and disappear forever, tears blurring their eyes and hatred constricting their chest and sadness closing their throat and forcing them to gasp for air. There was ash in their lungs yet also a fresh breeze, they were blind yet seeing, the sharp cold of snow against their skin contrasting the roaring flames of Gallifrey licking their arms as it _burned, burned, burned -_

_ “You are the destroyer of worlds!” _

_ “Can you hear it, Doctor?” _

_ “I forgive you! After all you’ve done!” _

_ “So this is me. Getting out.” _

_ “Goodbye, raggedy man.” _

“Yasmin! Concentrate!”

Yaz whimpered, a lone tear trailing down her face as the Doctor forced the memories back into her own head in one swift, jarring movement, leaving them once more in the interrogation room. Quickly, the blonde pulled Yasmin close to her and wiped her tear away, before gently wrapping her arms around in a hug.

“I’m sorry,” The Doctor murmured carefully, into her ear. “I’m so, so sorry you had to see that Yaz. I shouldn’t have lost control. I’m sorry.”

“Doctor,” Yasmin choked, “Your memories, _how_-?”

“We can talk about it later,” The Doctor promised, although she was very, very undeniably tempted to go back on it. To wipe her mind of these events completely. It would only take a single moment. It wouldn’t hurt.

_No_, she reminded herself. _That would be wrong. That would be cruel. Yasmin has to give consent._

“For now,” she continued, “We still have two more major memories left to fix. I need you to focus on them, yeah? Can you do that?”

Yasmin stared into her, her eyes so raw and wild with emotion that it sent a pang of stinging pain racing through her hearts. “Doctor,” she whispered, voice cracked, “They- they _tortured_ you, you were- _four billion years-_.”

The breath left the Doctor’s lungs, as she bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. The metallic tang flooded her mouth as fear crowded the rest of her senses. Four billions years of memories inside her head that she wouldn’t wish upon anyone - how many details of that time did Yaz have floating in her head, now, too?

“Yasmin,” The Doctor said, firmly, more commanding. “We will sort that out. But right now I need you to concentrate on the task at hand. Please.”

It took a moment, where they stared at one another for just a bit too long in too much silence, until Yaz finally, finally breathed a shaky, “Okay.”

The next memory that was brought up took place in a classroom, and by the sudden panicked intake of breath from Yaz, it wasn’t a good one. The Doctor ran a reassuring hand over her shoulder and squeezed in what she hoped was a comforting gesture, before getting to work.

As she unwound the blackened tendrils from the walls of the classroom, a sudden pang of grave fear and anger and frustration, melded together in an ugly mix, struck her violently in the chest. Her arm stung horribly, horribly, and there was a sharp sensation against the side of her face. _They were hurting Yaz._

_ Feedback _ , she reminded herself. _It’s feedback from the memory. Ignore it, and comfort Yaz when this is all over._

Her blood boiled as she overheard the disgusting jeers of Yasmin’s past classmates, but refused to let herself watch what was happening, forcing herself to focus.  _ This was a private memory. She had no right to watch. Even if Yaz saw hers. _

The moment she signaled that she was done, Yasmin let the memory fall as fast as she could, panting wetly through constricted lungs at the agonizing reopening of a time she thought she was long over. She fell to the floor of the interrogation room, emotionally exhausted and undoubtedly in unbearable mental pain, and the Doctor rushed forward to catch her by her elbows before she could collapse.

“Come on Yaz,” she encouraged, softly. “Just one more. That’s all we need. One more memory. You can do this. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Nodding shakily, Yasmin gripped the Doctor’s coat tightly in one hand as she forced herself to concentrate once more. The Doctor, this time, didn’t take down any details of the memory at all - she went straight to preventing the disintegration, focusing only on getting this over with as fast as possible, _how could she allow Yasmin to get this hurt under her care, this was basically torture for her-!_

A sudden, vast sense of anguish struck her forcefully, and the Doctor’s eyes widened as she recognized this all-too-familiar sensation very, very well. It was the feeling, the agony, of knowing you’ve lost someone you love dearly and can never, ever get them back. _Who did Yasmin lose?_  


_‘Shit,’_ she muttered under her breath, and quickly snapped the last tendril into place, allowing Yaz to drop the memory. Immediately after, she unceremoniously dragged herself and Yaz from the interrogation room as fast as she could, the both of them ending up back in the white room - the border of their minds.

Gripping Yaz’s hand tighter, she shared a long look with the other, attempting to make her gaze as reassuring and soft as possible. “When you wake up, Yaz, you will be in pain, and for that I’m truly sorry. But I need you to promise me that you won’t panic, okay? We can’t have you injure yourself more than what’s already been done.”

Fear, rightfully placed, clouded Yasmin’s eyes for a moment. The Doctor watched as she gulped, tightened her grip on the blonde’s hand, and blinked the fear away until shaky determination took its place. “I’m ready.”

“Okay,” the Doctor whispered, and on the count of three, sent them both falling back through the black voids of their eyelids and gasping awake into the realm of bright consciousness.

Wincing, the Doctor tumbled out of her stool and to the floor as the harsh light of the medbay invaded her eyes, worsening the pulsing pain originating from somewhere in the middle of her head. She didn’t have time to ruminate on her own agony, as Yasmin let out a loud, if somewhat muffled cry through closed lips.

Forcing herself to stand straight on shaky feet, the Doctor pointedly ignored the uncomfortable burning heat from her knee as she leaned against the bed to check on Yaz. To her relief, Ryan had mostly finished up on treating her arm under the TARDIS’ instruction, and Graham was holding her down enough to prevent her spasms of pain from irritating any open gashes left on her arms. 

“Doc?” Graham asked, concerned, antsy. “Are...are you both going to alright? Is there anything else we can do?”

She grimaced in sympathy at the sight, watching as the TARDIS stitched and repaired Yaz’s arm with controlled injected medibots, any more open gashes closing swiftly but carefully under the old girl’s expert eye. The Doctor let out a worried breath, and clasped Yaz’s hand into her own, who squeezed her hand in a death grip to deal with her pain with yet another muffled whimper.

“I’m okay,” she assured, albeit unsteadily. “Yaz... Yasmin will be okay. She’ll be okay. There's nothing more we can do but wait.”

It took hours for the girl’s suffering to subside, although it felt more like an eternity to the Doctor. Through it all, she stayed by her side, allowing the younger to take out her pain on the blonde’s hand. By the time Yasmin was well enough, lucid enough for conversation, the boys had long since been sent to a fitful rest in their own rooms in the TARDIS, leaving only her, the Doctor, and the dimmed lights of the medbay.

“Doctor?” Came a croaked voice, from the bed, and she was hovering over Yasmin immediately with a glass of water and a painkiller tablet. She looked better, that was for sure, but the prominent lines of her closed cuts against her forearm, peeking out against wrapped gauze, spoke of inevitable scarring. _How could she let someone under her care get hurt this bad? How close was she to losing Yaz like she’d lost everyone else?_

“I’m here,” she reassured, helping her friend sit up, before coaxing her to drink slowly from the glass. It was only after Yaz had drank everything, and taken the tablet somewhere along as well, that the Doctor allowed herself to relax and lean against the bed.

After a long moment of silence, where Yaz fiddled carefully with the bed sheets and the Doctor stewed in her thoughts, the younger finally spoke up. “Wait - You’re okay, right? Last time I checked your knee was hurt, and Ryan and Graham were fine but… they’re still okay too, yeah?”

The Doctor blinked, caught off guard for a moment by just how worried the other was for her friends as opposed to herself, before remembering that she should probably give an answer. “We’re- we’re fine,” she assured, “I’m a quick healer, and I had the medibots run their course with me while you were out of it anyway. You got the, um, worst out of that adventure.”

“Good.” Yaz leaned her head back, against the cold wall behind the bed, poorly hiding the wince that came from moving. “That’s - that’s good. But… what about mentally? For you?”

“I should be asking you that.” A bitter grin formed on the Doctor’s face, which faded rather quickly as she thought of how to answer. “...I’m fine. Or I will be. The more pressing concern is what you remember.”

“All my memories are fine, thanks to you,” Yaz said, shooting the blonde a grateful look, “They’re all clear. It’s just…”

“Just what?” The Doctor pressed.

Yaz shrugged, helplessly, and let out an audible breath through her nose. “Your memories. Some of them are, um… Some of them are in here but they’re not - focused. I have really basic ideas and descriptions of them, I think, but I don’t actually have anything else except for maybe a couple of- of fuzzy images?” She bit her lip, shifting her jaw lightly in frustration. “...I don’t really know how to describe it. Sorry.”

“...It’s okay.” The Doctor reached out, and slipped Yasmin’s hand in between hers’. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I should be the one apologizing. It couldn’t have been easy experiencing that.”

“...How do you stand it?”

The Doctor furrowed her eyebrows, looking back at Yaz. “What?”

“I mean… what you’ve seen, what you’ve been through.” Yaz gestured outwards loosely with her uninjured arm, pulling her hand from the Doctor’s grip, her lips drawn into a taut line. “You must think we’re all fragile and frail, humans. Nothing any of us have ever experienced could possibly live up to what you have. I just… how do you stand the weight of that? All that emotion? When we can’t even stand it when we’ve experienced a fraction of what you have, and...what’s the _point_?”

“Yasmin.” The Doctor’s voice was strong, unyielding, and captured her attention immediately. The blonde stared into Yasmin’s eyes as she spoke. “Our suffering is not a competition, Yaz. My suffering doesn’t outweigh or invalidate yours in any way, at all, ever.”

She reached a tentative hand out, and cupped Yaz’s cheek gently. “You aren’t frail, or fragile. You certainly aren’t weak. You just survived mental manipulation, and gritted your teeth in the face of agonising pain and injury. You’re strong, Yasmin - one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. I- I _felt_ some of your memories, Yaz, so trust me when I say this. The fact is, you don’t have to suffer through wars or win battles with powerful cosmic entities or feel the worst of the worst to be strong. You just have to try your best to get through whatever obstacles are in front of you _now_. That’s it.”  
  


The Doctor sighed, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind the other’s ear. “Just - Just try your best,” she said, softly, “and that would be enough.”

Yasmin stared back for a long moment, pursing her lips tightly as she puzzled on what she could possibly say in response. Eventually, she settled on leaning against the Doctor’s hand, and whispering a muted “Thank you.”

“It’s okay.” The Doctor said. And in that moment, everything was.


End file.
